John Gilmour wrote:
I've seen this version used for other BBS groups.
phpBB is a very popular forum and one that I really like having seen the inner secrets of it. I think the database and program design is really well thought out. After completing the upgrade I configured some stuff the way I prefer it and then edited some of the designs to my own liking. There are still things I want to do with the design, but time ran out.
Most of the features that you see were not invented by me or Adam. The phpBB people have invented a lot of good features in this release and our work is only to fine tune the stuff to our liking.
John Gilmour wrote:
1. The avatars look a little small to recognize the person. The exposure level might also be off. Are these adjustable? Or are they limited in DPI?
John, we use the same avatars as previously, but in the new layout they might not look as good. We could make them larger, there's no strict limit on that. It's just the time it takes to download them. Most of them are 3 kb in size and I think we could make them wider (there's room in the column) and maybe a little bit higher as most people tend to post long replies anyway. 6 kb might be a reasonable limit.
We're looking into a new way to handle the avatars, and there's a lot of them to be re-done, so expect no immediate change. Those who haven't got any yet, might get a larger version as Adam prepares and uploads them.
John Gilmour wrote:
2. Can the forum's colors be customized by the viewer. I thought the older forum was easier to read for me- though others seem to prefer this way.
There is a whole set of "templates" that you can use to layout the forum in different ways. These "templates" are easily downloadable and installed and I had intended to install a whole lot of them. Unfortunately much of the page layout is in the same templates, so any customization that I want to do I'll have to do multiple times. Ie any new, moved or removed feature must be implemented once for each template.
John Gilmour wrote:
3. Will this version support something dynamic like a small quicktime movie clip of slalom racing running on the "front page"? You could allow for a bypass for dial up users.
Adam and I have been discussing a new front page to replace the static stuff to make it easier to update and more "alive". To do that we first had to move to this version. When we get there we can discuss it again.
John Gilmour wrote:
4. I hope we could have an informative video clip section a "How To" section of small 15 second or shorter clips. They could be contributed by many different people and eventually edited together. Not as cohesive as a video shot by a single person, but likely sufficent for newbies to get a easy start.
John, the forum is open, you can just start working on it. We can host the videos for you no problem.
John Gilmour wrote:
6. One other thing is some threads wander about in topic when the information should move to another pre existing thread is there a way to put a "split in the road" to show the offshoot conversation has moved? That way teh threads would stay more focused...I know I am a cause of this thread wandering.....hmmm
This is one of my concerns too. How will later readers be able to find stuff it we keep changing subjects in the middle of a thread?
Moving posts was a bit cumbersome before and they say it should be easier now, but I have yet to try it. If it's not easy enough I might program my own "feature" to handle this. This is important. Please help by avoiding it in the first place. Just start a new topic yourself and continue the discussion there.
Good to see that most comments are positive.
/Jani
for people from other forums to borrow quotes from slalomskateboarder.com and start interesting discussions to keep their sites’ ratings up. It would be great if we could ease their loads and help promote slalom in other places on the web. 
